Health Studies

Learning Goals

Aims for Health Studies Minor

To create a coherent curricular structure in which students address issues of health and disease informed by multidisciplinary investigations, combining insights from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities

To develop in our students the ability to think and write critically with depth, precision and sophistication about complex topics on health, disease and social justice;

To prepare students to work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to contribute to the well being of local communities and global populations.

Understand how organizational structures, financing, and the delivery of health care and public health services impact population health.

Recognize the role of community collaborations in promoting population health.

Learning Goals for the Capstone Course

Through lectures, assigned and independent reading, students will work together to develop significant expertise in the chosen thematic area.

Students, individually or in small groups, will identity an issue important to health and disease and prepare a research proposal that synthesizes and analyzes literature from their disciplinary field.

Students will propose an original study of a health issue. The nature of this original research proposal would depend on the specific disciplinary perspective and major of the student. For example, the end product of the proposed work could be: a set of experiments and a discussion of the potential results; the design of a drug trial, complete with the correct statistical analysis; an educational curriculum or community intervention; a proposal for a monograph; or an artistic work.

Students will share their preliminary proposals in formal oral presentations over the course of the semester. Meetings of the seminar will be set aside for formal critique of nascent proposals, such that each student will have the chance to participate in the generation of their colleagues’ proposals.

Students will present and defend their project in a poster or oral presentation at the end of the course.